


Triptych

by koyori



Category: Tokyo Ghoul
Genre: Abusive Relationships, Age Difference, Arima Headcanons, Backstory, Character Study, Choking, Dubious Consent, F/M, Gen, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Speculation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-24
Updated: 2016-03-25
Packaged: 2018-05-22 23:16:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 5
Words: 12,537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6097192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/koyori/pseuds/koyori
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I told you, I knew he was talented from the moment I laid eyes on him,” says Chigyou, the pen spinning on his index finger. Hypnotizing, round and round. “The new guys all want to know about Arima. They think that if they know his secrets, they can become him, but I honestly hope they recognize it as an impossible dream. I’ll tell you about Arima – he was fifteen when he set foot in this lab for the first time, and he knew exactly what he’d killed and what it meant. Usually the younger guys want to name their first quinque something really cool, like ‘Devourer’ or ‘Black Mist.” Something, ah, fun. They think it’s like a video game, right, or a manga. But that boy insisted on a plain name.”</p><p>“Yukimura.” </p><p>“Right.” Chigyou threw his pen in the air, and caught it with his other hand. “That’s how you know it mattered – it’s the plain names that hide the most.”</p><p>-</p><p>A speculative work on how Arima Kishou acquired his quinques, with details drawn from both TG canon and fan theories. Currently on the Yukimura arc, which falls chronologically before TG:jack.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Stranger Eyes on You

**Author's Note:**

> I'm starting to post sketches and other miscellany for this fic over at my tumblr, [here,](http://chimescity.tumblr.com) which is primarily an art blog anyways. Follows are much appreciated.

_So I find words I never thought to speak_  
_In streets I never thought I should revisit_  
_When I left my body on a distant shore._  
_(T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets: Little Gidding)_

 

“You never trust a man who hides so much of himself away,” Marude roars. At least, it could be Marude. All that’s visible is a pair of pinstriped trousers, legs dangling precariously off the edge of a rough wooden bench. At that tipping angle, it’s about to fall over. The speaker’s head is hidden behind the ramen stand’s old banner. There’s the sound of clinking cups, of swallows of sake, of people slurping noodles and trying not to spill the hot broth.

“Keep your voice down -”

“So what! Not like he can hear! Workaholic son of a -”

“- the best we’ve got, so don’t -”

If Kishou reaches out now, he would touch coarse cotton, and the strands would rub and catch against the calluses lining his palms. Hard knots of skin where he gripped his quinque tight, where the skin knew it had to protect itself. He would pull the curtain aside, and Marude would look up with caterpillar eyebrows rising high into his hair, mouth pursed in a tight line of shame, hot fear of being caught crawling up his face. His eyes would fill with defiance – _and why are you out tonight, Investigator? Pale, silent thing you are_.

Kishou holds his hand tight to his chest, as though he is cradling some delicate cocoon. Keeps it to himself. In his other he grips his black-lined briefcase, and it bumps against his knee, the cold weight inside an agony.

-

“I want it,” whispers Hairu. “I really, really…”

Kishou sees her out the corner of his good eye. “Hm?”

Her hands blur, fluttering back and forth in denial. “No! I didn’t say anything!” But she stares at the case with desire brimming in her eyes, sneaking loving glances at it when he pretends to look away. It’s a handsome case, he’ll allow that. The surface liquid and black, embossed with gold at rigid edges that catch the light streaming in through the windows.

He really ought to have curtains installed, Kishou thinks, it’s been on his to-do list for a while. It’s not good for sight, having his desk backlit all the time.

Hairu looks at him through her eyelashes, playing coy. She walks a wide circle around his office and stretches, the Squad Zero coat hugging sinuous lines, tight like a lover’s hands. It’s a slinking movement that can turn heads and break hearts, and send the boys down in the Rank Three cubicles scrabbling for their handkerchiefs, trying to hide the lines of drool on their chins.

Kishou’s seen it all. He wonders where he should have dinner – Chinese might be good, maybe.

“The laboratory department won’t respond when I ask them how it’s going,” Hairu complains, practically bouncing to a stop in front of his desk. “I just want some news!”

Kishou closes his eyes. “They’ll tell you when they’ve made progress. They’re responsible for manufacturing quinques for all investigators, not just the upper ranks. Give them time.”

“Hmph.” Hairu doesn’t sound placated, but she’s never argued with him. “How long did it take them to make Narukami?”

She says the name so casually that she must be forcing it. Kishou’s seen the green in her gaze, when she looks at Narukami’s case – and moreover, he’s seen the monthly reports from the Research Department. He knows that Hairu is waiting for an ukaku quinque with changeable blades and dense energy output; an Academy trainee could figure out what she wants out of it, where she found her divine inspiration. But Hairu has always found joy in the art of mimicry, a twisted craft of loyalty and devotion with diminishing returns; and who is he to deny her that catharsis?

“Not long,” he answers, shuffling the papers on his desk. They’re tedious things. He wants to hold anything but a pen. “They knew my specifications already. Narukami -” he almost says  _she_ – “was my third.”

He leaves so much unsaid, but Hairu has never been able to leave any stone unturned. Kishou has known this, from the moment that he met the girl in the Garden. She ran with her arms flapping, bird-bones uncoordinated with the swell of her love and affection. The white uniform-blouse was two sizes too large on her, billowing with wind, and in the center of it Hairu was a small pink-haired sail that hugged him fiercely around the legs. She looks good in white, always has.

“Your third?”

Kishou nods. Surely she’s heard this story before, but he’ll humor her – it’s Hairu, after all.  “IXA, and – ah, right, you never saw me with Yukimura.” He remembers her, very pink and small, in the Garden. “It was several years ago.”

Several. Several, indeed. In a handful of years the clocks have spun and the sands have fallen, and at the end of it all here he sits, straitjacketed in tailored gray wool and white-winged awards, while Hairu parades and prances before him. With age, Hairu is all woman, child’s fat melted from her features, and with age Kishou’s hair has gone parched and dry. Between their feet gleams a checkerboard grid, the stark lines so unlike trampled flowers.

What was it that Yukimura had said?

“Yukimura is First Class Hirako’s quinque, right?” Hairu asks.

“No, he’s using a different one now. Nagomi, I think. I don’t know who has Yukimura, actually.”

Yukimura. Yukimura is a quinque. For so long, he’s been able to dissociate the name from the –

_Not a man, don’t ever let yourself think that, Kishou._

Searching for words is drowning. Lower oneself into the memories, feet-first, but don’t hesitate to let go, sink to anchor and dredge up the hidden things at the bottom. They are stacked one atop the other, and Kishou scavenges the corpses without meaning to.

_“You never forget your first.”_

Ah, that was it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I started writing this after TG:re chapter 65 came out, and tumblr more or less exploded with Arima theories. It's all conjecture, but I do have a rough outline for where this is going - of course, with Ishida-sensei's level of plot twists, my outline will probably be very wrong, very soon.
> 
> Shout-out to makyun.tumblr.com for being an excellent hub for Arima theories and headcanons.


	2. Somewhere Never Traveled

_your slightest look easily will unclose me_  
_though i have closed myself as fingers,_  
_you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens_  
_(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose_  
_(E.E. Cummings, somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond)_

 

Spring in Shinagawa Ward came late that year, floating up the Meguro River with the morning fog. It caught the sleepy residents of Yashio District by surprise, for after the long winter haze it was difficult to discern when one season ended and another began. Still, soon there were greenling buds on the cherry trees, and green-gold sprouts could be seen in the sidewalk cracks beside Minatogaoka Park, and no one could deny then that the late spring had finally arrived.

Other facets of daily life were more predictable. The residents of Shinagawa Ward, Yashio District, 5-chome, could easily tell when the local branch of the Asahi Shimbun found a new hire for their paper route: when dawn broke and their doorsteps were assaulted by the soft slap of the morning news. It was a trifling bit of noise to wake to, but everyone knew it wouldn’t last for long. The fifth tossed paper was always the tripwire, after which Mrs. Morinaga Hanako (Apartment 3-B) would respond to the offense by rounding on the paper boy just as he came around the corner to her stoop. In her haori and plastic slippers she would gesticulate her grievances at him, and the newcomer would either soon learn not to repeat his mistake, or quit the job entirely.

“I’m not saying I like the way she treats them,” said Mrs. Okamoto to Mr. Okamoto, two doors down in Apartment 3-D. “But she brings a certain peace to the neighborhood.”

On this particular morning, the newspaper thudded in, a cat screamed, and the neighbors braced for impact – but Mrs. Morinaga was nowhere to be seen. If Mrs. Okamoto were to shuffle by the balcony window on her way to the supermarket, and if she were to glance over into the window of Apartment 3-B, she would have seen Mrs. Morinaga Hanako with her phone in one hand and a cigarette in the other, wearing a heavy frown that tugged at her jowls.

“What do you mean, live in Shinagawa with me?” she barked into the handset, a heavy furrow digging into the ruddy space between her eyebrows. “Listen, Maaya-chan, I’m not trying to complain. I have the space. But I also know your husband works for those anti-ghoul detectives. Don’t you think they’re funded too well to, well, to ask family members for favors like this? This doesn’t sound like government – well, if you insist – it’s just odd, that’s all I’m saying.”

Mrs. Okamoto caught the end of those words as she shuffled through the balcony, and she smelled the smoke, but she certainly did not care enough about Mrs. Morinaga and her troubles to dwell further. She had her own concerns – the market had run out of fresh fish for the day, which meant that Mr. Okamoto would need to have something other than grilled mackerel for breakfast. Mr. Okamoto did not like breaking his routines, as he often reminded Mrs. Okamoto, especially when he came home doused in the scent of cheap tobacco and sour liquor every Friday. Mrs. Okamoto could have told him otherwise. She had it on good authority, from the tofu vendor at the market, the lack of fresh mackerel was due to a shortage in fishing trips, because the late spring had led to an increase in winter storms.

Or perhaps it was the other way around – that the winter storms had led to the late spring. Did it matter? The end result was that routines were broken long before the boy with the blue-black hair and cold eyes arrived in Shinagawa, and after that, returning to routines became the material of dreams for certain residents.

Particularly the two unfortunate souls in Apartment 3-C.

But Mrs. Okamoto Ayane, stepping past the windows of Apartment 3-B and hearing the gravelling deep voice of Mrs. Morinaga Hanako, had no premonition that such changes were about to take root in her sleepy building, on this tree-lined street in 5-chome, Yashio District, Shinagawa Ward, Tokyo. She hefted the bag on her arm, the green onions poking out and soaking a wet patch in the elbow of her cardigan, and only hoped that Mr. Okamoto had not yet awoken.

Ahead, the door to Apartment 3-C opened, and a young woman stepped out with light, quick movements. She smiled at Mrs. Okamoto in greeting, as she wrestled with a large canvas tote and tossed long black hair over one shoulder.

“Good morning, Mrs. Okamoto,” she said, her voice pleasant and far too awake for the mist-draped morning. “I’m finally up early enough to greet you, but I see that you’ve finished shopping already.”

Mrs. Okamoto covered her mouth with her hand as she laughed. “Yes, but young people should be getting more rest. You work late hours, Youko.”

Youko’s smile turned crooked. “We all wish we worked a little less, Mrs. Okamoto.”

“That’s true.” The sun finally pierced through the morning fog. “How is Yukito doing? If that cough lingers any more, you should really go see a doctor.”

“I’ll let him know, but I think he’s getting better.” Youko looked at her watch, and Mrs. Okamoto took the hint, standing aside to let her pass. “He said to thank you for the soup – he really liked it.”

She adjusted the strap of her tote bag and left in a hurry, short coat swinging behind her. Mrs. Okamoto hid another smile as she watched Yukimura Youko go, walking down the stairs in her pressed navy suit and slacks and bright pink athletic shoes. Down in the courtyard, the young woman deposited her bag in her bike basket, and swung her leg over in one smooth motion, pedaling out the gate at a brisk pace.

Young women these days were really something.

-

The cram school parking lot was empty when Youko glided in; she found the asphalt still wet, smeared with remains of blossoms from the courtyard trees. They stuck to her tire treads as she wheeled her bike to the doorside rack, streaks of pink and white clinging stubborn to the rubber grooves.

She called her brother as she unlocked the doors and headed to her second-floor office. He picked up on the third ring, but for several seconds all she could hear was a loud, snuffling sound.

“Yukito?”

“I’m up, I’m up, I swear.” He yawned. “How are the kids?”

“They’re not here yet. I’ll be so glad when school starts – I’m getting really tired of waking up early.” She heard rustling on the other line, which meant that Yukito was probably getting dressed.

“Gotta love workaholic parents. At least revenue shoots through the roof during the summer.” He yawned again, but this time the sound was muffled, like he was trying to suppress it. “I’m not looking forward to the start of term.”

“Tough luck. It’s what you get, being a school psychologist.” Youko found her lesson plans for the day. She was teaching world literature in the morning, for students about to take the college entrance exams – well, they were at least more attentive than her usual classes. “Oh, I saw Mrs. Okamoto this morning. You should return her soup pot soon.”

She could imagine Yukito shuddering on the other side. “I have to wash it out?”

“It can’t always be me.”

“I hate that smell so much, though,” he complained.

“Do it, and you’ll find something good in the fridge. I saved it for you.” Youko heard the bell tinkle downstairs, and knew by the rhythm of the footsteps that it was her teaching assistant. “Listen, I have to go. The pot, don’t forget!”

Before she left her office she opened her tote bag, and put her lunch in the mini-fridge under her desk. She had wrapped it in plastic wrap and aluminum foil, so that the smell wouldn’t get out. As long as she ate in her office, she could air out the room afterwards, and no one would ever know. Youko made a point of bringing tougher, muscular cuts for her work lunch; that way there was less mess. She and Yukito kept the softer entrails at home, where it was easy to clean up any splatter. In fact, there was a bowl of pancreas in the fridge that she’d saved for Yukito, with several layers of fatty, feather-light peritoneum still attached. The thought alone was enough to make her press her lips into a thin line, to keep the pooling saliva contained in her mouth.

Youko shook her head. This was exactly the reason why she told the manager that she couldn’t teach human physiology classes. Not a lack of knowledge, but a lack of self-discipline.

-

On a cold March evening, Mrs. Okamoto Ayane went to take out the garbage, and passed a boy with a duffle bag heading up the stairs. As she sorted her combustible waste, Mrs. Morinaga opened her door and let the boy in, taking the letter he proffered, with the look of a woman returning a favor that she did not want to owe in the first place.

-

On a cold March morning, Yukimura Youko woke up her twin brother for work, and told him in no uncertain terms that he needed to be a more responsible person – that they were twins, so why was she always the one making breakfast and preparing coffee in the morning? If high school students could use an alarm clock and go to school on time for the start of term ceremony, surely the school staff could do the same.

She would later regret that she made him go to work at all.

-

On a cold March morning, when the branches were heavy with blossom and velvet-soft petals cascaded in flurries, Yukimura Yukito crossed a bridge over the Keihin Canal and saw the boy.

The cherry trees, dripping in dew, had painted the corpses of their petals in broad swathes over gray concrete. Through the shower of falling flowers he saw the curve of a shoulder, clothed in the black gakuran of Yashio High School. The border of the boy’s stiff collar hid the nape of his neck, the collar itself obscured by hair so black it was glazed in a blue sheen. He turned just as Yukito stepped onto the bridge, but for a fragment of a second the boy’s eyes were hidden by cherry blossoms, rising in a multifoliate wave, borne aloft by the ocean wind.

In that moment, what caught Yukito’s gaze and held it were the boy’s lips – blush pink, the arching border formed by a cupid’s bow that dipped like a heart, lips that were parted in mid-sigh. Lips that compelled Yukito to stop in his tracks, to hold his breath in heavy contemplation of the intense fragility of such a sight.

In a dream-trance Yukito kept walking, wanting a glimpse of that fleeting vision. The boy walked fast – in the time that it took Yukito to recover his faculties, he was across the span of the bridge already, too far to catch up to. Yukito reached out to the retreating back, almost calling out, but in the end withdrew his hand. The boy had been wearing a Yashio High uniform, after all – there would be time, time enough. He would see him again, certainly.

With a renewed vigor in his step, Yukimura Yukito continued on his way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter summary: OCs OCs OCs whoa look at arima he's so pretty whoa


	3. Laurel Withers Quicker than the Rose

_So set, before the echoes fade,_  
_The fleet foot on the sill of shade,_  
_And hold to the lintel up_  
_The still-defended challenge cup._  
_(A.E. Housman, To An Athlete Dying Young)_

 

Under summer’s full glory Fura Taishi stripped to his briefs and leapt into the waves, whooping so loud that the sound echoed around the shoreline. Kishou caught a glimpse of patchy scarring along his hipbone, pink eating into sun-darkened skin, before Taishi disappeared under crystal waters.

Overhead, the sky was perfect, heaven’s dome blooming full with indigo stains. _The color of bruises_ , Kishou thought. _Shattered capillary beds and blood spreading under skin, blue from Rayleigh scattering._ It was here and gone before he could catch it, hang onto it – not that he would ever repeat such a thing. Taishi would cock his head and say nothing, but in his eyes the question would hang –

 _Arima, that’s…you really do say too much._ And Kishou would stare back, and Taishi would laugh nervously. And he would try to forget that it happened at all, Taishi would, lobbing awkward memories out of his head like his favorite split-fingered fastballs.

“Arima!”

He sat up at Taishi’s voice, elbows digging into the soft sand. “Arima,” Taishi called, “Come in! The water’s nice!”

Kishou shook his head. “It looks cold,” he said, “And I don’t like being wet.”

“Suit yourself,” Taishi said, a little too quickly. “But it’s really nice though!”

Kishou watched him swim away then, Taishi paddling until he was reduced to bobbing blonde flotsam in the distance. Eventually he was far enough, and the waves high enough, that his head was obscured by expanding swells of ocean. For seconds at a time Kishou lost sight of him – each interval growing, until a full minute passed since he’d seen Taishi in the flesh.

The sea was choppy, the waves carrying myriad possibilities of _what could have happened,_ welling up to echo hollow in his cranium, and Kishou surged to his feet with the next white-capped breaker. The soft sand foiled his hasty movement, arresting momentum as his heels sank in. With that handicap, and with Taishi on his mind, he stumbled.

As Kishou reached the water’s edge, Taishi reappeared. He wore his bleached locks plastered against his forehead, and around his shoulders hung a massive string of kelp, slick ribbons glinting like so many multicolored pageant sashes.

“Oi, Arima, coming in the water?”

“…No,” replied Kishou. He had no need to. The waves licked at his toes, but he ignored them.

For lunch they stopped at a beachside shack, a little further down the shore. The two disinterested teenagers manning the kitchen stared Kishou down as he went to the register, where an elderly grandmother calculated his total with a worn-down abacus. The top of her whitened head, even counting the wispy chignon, barely cleared his shoulder. Kishou asked for two servings of yakisoba, and fingered the back of his neck with trepidation as one of the teenage line-cooks, the taller of the two, fired up the grill. The cook wiped his hands on his apron and reached for a grease-painted spatula, the same color as the kerchief tied around his forehead.

Taishi, who hadn’t watched the cooking process, dug into the yakisoba with extreme enthusiasm, and had cleared his plate by the time Kishou was barely halfway through. He left and returned with two dripping bottles of green tea, one of which he plunked on the table beside Kishou. His own drink he cracked open and gulped from, scattering glittering drops as he shook his hand free of condensation.

They carried on in silence until Kishou finished eating, and only then did Taishi open his mouth to speak. Not a good sign. If Taishi had a good idea, patience was to him a forgotten word, but reticence was something that came rarely. Kishou unscrewed the plastic cap with steady hands, resigning himself to whatever came next.

“So you’re not coming back to Seishin?” Taishi asked.

Kishou took a long swallow before he answered. Like downing a lump of bitter glass, the frigid tea slid down his throat, brown and green and sugarless.

“I’m not,” he confirmed. But there was so much more he could have said.

_Marude wants me investigating a case in the 15 th ward. _

_You can have the stuff in my apartment, because I can’t take it with me._

_I’m moving out next week. I don’t like the 15 th ward, but it’s not like I have a choice. _

_You can have my notes for math, because I know you suck at math. You can have all my other notes too. If you want._

_This summer was the best._

_Thank you._

Kishou drank more tea instead. Cold marbles dropping into his stomach, brown and green and tasting like nothing.

Taishi looked at him with those earnest eyes. He didn’t know, but Kishou watched it happen in the back of his eyelids, unreal story playing out in a dream-world – if Taishi asked, like he did on that moon-soaked evening – that twilight when Kishou killed one ghoul with the remains of another, the movement instinctive and easy now, when Marude had dressed him down for doing his job. If Taishi asked, he would say yes. It could be so simple. _Stay._ Kishou had no words other than affirmations to fill his mouth with, to line his throat with, to choke out of his lungs when prodded with the lightest of touches. If only he asked, if only.

"It’ll suck, not having you around,” Taishi said. He drummed his fingers on the table. “You should visit, though – like, assuming you’ll have the time, honor student.”

“I’ll ask them if I can,” Kishou answered. “The higher-ups.”

Taishi’s fingers stopped. “Oh,” he said.

Kishou smiled at him, tried his hardest to smile earnestly. The corners of his mouth went up, the edges of his eyes crinkled. He summoned all the gentleness he knew and remembered, tried to mimic the hitch in his breath when Taishi had shouted that he wouldn't expose Arima as a CCG investigator, Taishi shouting with fists clenched and brows drawn. Taishi’s belief, Taishi’s loyalty, Taishi’s faith – he thought of all these, and moved his mouth in the right direction.

On the highway back from Kanagawa, Taishi decided that they needed to stop for gas. This was the problem with driving down to the beach on a moped, he said, they made good time and didn’t have to sit on the overcrowded train back to Tokyo, but there was no getting around the need for refills. While Taishi filled up the tank, Kishou went to the neighboring convenience store and chose two popsicles from the display case, unwrapping his own as he headed back to the gas station. Taishi would call him an asshole for eating first, probably, but the dusk, peeking burnt orange through the trees, seemed hotter than the day. The heat didn’t descend from the sky overhead, but emanated instead from baked asphalt, slow-roasting through the rubber of Kishou’s sneakers.

He ate, but not fast enough. The ice bar he’d picked for himself was melon cream, and it withered like roses in the sun, sticky rivulets running down his fingers as soon as the wrapper came fully away. Kishou put it in his mouth, pushed it in as far as it would go, cold hitting the back of his throat and numbing his soft palate. His fingers were tacky with sugar, pale green rivulets running into the seams of his wristwatch band.

“Arima-kun?”

A woman called out to him. She raised her hand to him but did not wave, and instead repeated his name again, like she was unsure but testing him. Long black hair fluttered across her face.

That voice, he recognized that voice. Her arms were draped in an anti-UV wrap, and a broad-brimmed hat cast half her face in shadow, but he knew that voice, knew that face, knew the other iteration of that face all too well. Kishou contemplated avoiding her, but if she had gathered the courage to call out to him, she must be more than halfway sure of his identity. Already she was approaching, heeled sandals clicking ever closer with metronome precision.

“Miss Yukimura.” He bowed, as best as he could, and for a moment was caught with indecisiveness over whether to clean his hand on his trousers or in his mouth. His index and middle fingers clamped together and stayed stuck, bound by a vise grip of sweet cream and artificial coloring. “I didn’t – didn’t expect to see you here.”

She walked to him, her pace halting, and said nothing in reply. In her face Kishou saw only ghosts. His jaw tensed when he swallowed, and when he did the melon cream burned acid splotches down the back of his throat.

-

Yukito handed the girl a tissue, wincing a little as she blew her nose and then wiped her eyes. She sniffled, blew her nose again, and finally looked up with her eyes glittering. Yukito almost turned away – this was too cliché, all of it, but he forced himself to sit still and listen to her declarations of gratitude. At last she left, and he put his feet on his desk and crossed his ankles, finally allowed a few moments of silence before the next student entered.

It had been like this for the entire morning. Yukito glanced over his planner notes and sighed; he was scheduled to present a talk at an international neuropsychology conference in a month, but this school gig was keeping him far too busy to do any substantive work at the moment. The optimist in him noted that his current job could make for an interesting case study, but the pragmatist retorted that there was no possible way he could finish before the conference. A talk at the _International Conference on Loss, Bereavement, and Human Resilience_ looked good on any CV, of course, and the timing was excellent. Yukito had been in high demand since he co-authored a series of articles about the psychological and sociological effects of ghoul killings on urban populations last year. It was the reason he had this job as a part-time school psychologist in the first place.

He wondered how long they planned to keep him on for. The school first got in touch with him via the private hospital network he worked for, not soon after the murder of Kayano Yanagi. Yukito knew, from reading her file, that Kayano was a popular second-year student at Yashio High. Well, she had lots of friends, at least, judging by the number of students who came to him for counseling. The word ‘popular’ didn’t feel accurate, because the girl in the photo looked homely by any objective standard, her only attractive point being her smile. Pity he’d never seen it in person.

Yukito reached for the folder again, the autopsy report and Kayano’s school photo beaming up at him from the first page. An amusing observation came to him: he couldn’t tear his eyes away from Kayano’s file for the same reason that Youko, at home, always reached for the same books, despite having read them tens of dozens of times already. Familiarity. He was already intimate with the Kayano Yanagi case before he was called in to this school, after all. Some weeks ago, when they sent him the file for the first time, he’d been snacking on her pancreas for a midmorning pick-me-up. He’d pulled the manila envelope apart in his curiosity and left smears of her fat and connective tissue on the metal clasps.

The photo was his favorite part. Yukito had never seen any expression of Kayano’s besides a terrified one, before the photo. He ran his finger down her face, printed in black and white on cheap paper, and wanted to laugh until he was sick. He’d chosen carefully at the time, or so he thought. The night he pressed her against a back alley and swiped his kagune across her velvet throat, he picked her out special – because in her hair there was the scent of vomit and they both smelled it, all the blood pooling in her belly, her every step filling the air with a thick, heady fragrance that only ghouls could taste. _A pregnant high school girl_ , he told Youko, _human trash that won’t be missed._ After they’d taken the girl, his sister took the first bite. Youko had torn into the stomach first, her mouth lacquered in viscous red, and between her teeth he heard the little bones crunching.

The door opened, and Yukito sat up, hiding Kayano’s file in his lap. It was a useless precaution, as his desk was located in the far corner of the nursing office, several curtain partitions separating him from having a clear view of the door, and vice versa.

“I’m told this is the nurse’s office?” It was a boy’s voice, albeit a soft one. A pair of creased trouser cuffs peeked out from behind the threadbare white curtain hems. Yukito nodded on instinct before he realized that the boy couldn’t see him, and in haste he tried to stand up and push away all at once – the result being that while he rose upright, his chair skidded across the linoleum with a painful sound and collided with the tiles.

“Sorry, dropped something,” he called, scrambling, desperately trying to straighten his workspace. “I’m not the nurse, but maybe I can help you? What do you need?”

The trouser cuffs crossed the room with surprising speed, and when Yukito looked up again he was face to face with a pale boy standing before his desk. The student wore his gakuran buttoned tight up to his throat, the blue pin on his chest indicating his status as a first-year student, and a veil of thick bangs obscured a good half of his face. Hidden in plain sight, draped in ink and smoke – Yukito waxed lyrical on instinct and soon lost his train of thought when the boy looked up. Eyes met his, two glacial slivers set in a snowy field, and those lips – Yukito saw, recalled an infinitesimal time-fragment on a canal bridge not long ago, and had no time to react before the wind was stolen from his lungs.

“I was told I had to see the nurse to register my prescription with her,” said the boy, pointing to his glasses. “For these, in case I lose them.” He reached inside his pocket and pulled out a slip of paper, his eyebrows poised in a question. The scene was all too innocuous, and Yukito embarrassed himself with how long he took before answering.

“It’s – it’s fine.” He reached out, and was gratified when his fingers did not shake. “I’ll take that, and I’ll let the nurse know.”

Their childhood in Hokkaido was a whirlwind of colors, Youko always said, when she was reminiscing about the good times. Summer fields full of saturated blooms, clothing themselves in all colors available to the eye. Winter, when the snow quietly folded its silken form over everything, smoothed rough corners and reduced all scenery to stark monochromes. Yukito never understood what Youko saw in the beauty of Hokkaido until he met this boy’s face, strong aristocratic lines shaded in snow pastels. He wanted to touch, to have it melt against his fingers.

 “What’s your name?” Yukito asked, even though he could see it written on the first line of the prescription form.

“Arima Kishou.” The boy’s eyes were impassive. “But you can read that, right? Yukimura-sensei,” he added as an almost-afterthought, eyes flicking to the temporary nameplate on Yukito’s desk.

He damn well could, but backhanded insults aside, Yukito would kneel at any altar and pray to hear that voice again. It was an intoxicating sound. He made a copy and handed the original prescription back, and when Arima Kishou reached out for his form, Yukito made sure to brush Arima’s hand with his knuckles, a decision that sealed what he already knew. After the door closed, he brought the back of his hand to his mouth and licked, inhaling the subtlest trace of scent left on his own skin. Sweetness overwhelmed him, sweetness like the _shiran_ that cured hemoptysis; it was fine as any vintage on his tongue. Yukito would trade a thousand surefire chances at Kayano Yanagi for a mouthful of the sheer divinity that he tasted on his hand.

The bell rang, signaling the end of lunch period. Yukito stood and rolled his shoulders, imagining Arima Kishou walking down the hallways back to class – would he feel the predator’s eyes on his nape as he rounded every corner? Would he sense Yukito in the shadows, biding his time and waiting? This cat and mouse game was one that he and Youko practiced often and all too well. _Arima Kishou_. He rolled the name of his new prey in his mouth, savoring it. _Arima Kishou_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Power to me, I've finally figured out how to format things on AO3! Kind of.
> 
> Yukito's really a very unpleasant character, but I've always liked writing the unpleasant ones. Also, according to my outline, we're almost halfway through the Yukimura arc, but he and Arima really haven't interacted much...so I'm working on that. 
> 
> Quick sketch of Arima and the Yukimuras [here](http://chimescity.tumblr.com/post/140717260663/quick-sketch-of-arima-and-two-ocs-from-my-fic).
> 
> Chapter 67 of TG:re emotionally destroyed me over the weekend. That's true for everyone else, right? _Right?_


	4. In the Time of Cholera, Pt.1

_I love you as the plant that doesn’t bloom but carries_   
_The light of those flowers, hidden, within itself,_   
_And thanks to your love the tight aroma that arose_   
_From the earth lives dimly in my body_   
_(Pablo Neruda, One Hundred Love Sonnets/Cien sonetos de amor XVII)_

 

Somewhere in between colorless night and sun-blanched dawn, Yukimura Yukito woke with fresh blood coating his tongue and wetness between his legs. He stumbled out of his room and rinsed his mouth out in the sink, spitting light pink water onto the ceramic. When he ran his tongue against the inside of his cheek, he could taste swollen red cuts right where his molars clamped down.

Youko stirred in the next bedroom. His ears picked up the sound of her soft breathing, the rustling of the sheets as she rolled over and slept on.

He stepped out of his briefs on the way to the shower, kicking them aside by the toilet. The hot water did nothing to decrease his arousal, and when he closed his eyes and remembered Arima Kishou, standing in the nurse’s office with a coy smile playing on bowed lips, the thought alone was enough to send him bucking into his palm, stifling his voice against the icy tiles. He could feel the vibrations in the wall; Youko was waking up.

“Good morning,” she said, coming out of her room as he brushed his teeth. Through her open door, Yukito could see her bed, a cocoon of twisted sheets and unstacked books. “You’re up early.”

“Woke up before you, I know. What a rare happening.” He ignored her when she pushed at him, jostling for more space at the sink, so naturally she shoved harder. “It’s that damn cat. Screaming again at all hours of the night.”

“Cat’s in heat. Nobody bothered to spay it.” Youko splashed her face with water. “Strays, you know.”

“Mm.”

She did her makeup in silence, and he padded to the kitchen and went through the contents of the fridge.

“Youko,” he said while he poured out two mugs of coffee, “Is the guitar still around? I remember putting it somewhere in the living room, but I can’t find…”

“I put it away when I was cleaning the apartment, I think. Actually, no, wait.” She retreated to her room to get dressed, and through the door her voice was muffled. “You asked me to put it away.”

“I what?”

“You asked me to put it away,” she repeated a half-minute later, throwing the door open with fingers still working at her blouse buttons. “You were working on that paper with Ueno-sensei. Said you didn’t want any distractions.”

“Huh, that doesn’t sound like me.”

“Well, the paper mattered a lot.” She sat down at the table, pulling coffee and a plate of raw chopped liver towards her. “It’s in the hall closet, under the shoeboxes.”

“You had time to pile shoeboxes on top of it? How long ago was this?”

She shrugged at him, her mouth full, and Yukito rolled his eyes in reply.

He didn’t bother to tell her what he intended the guitar for, and by the time he brought it to the school, classes had started already and he didn’t feel comfortable taking it out. The nurse’s office was too clean, too sterile – Yukito felt like he’d be interrupting a sacred space if he started playing here. So he waited until the lunch break, and after setting a note on his desk saying that he would take walk-in appointments on the rooftop, headed up the stairs with his blue guitar case over one shoulder.

The roof was deserted when he exited the stairwell, a sight that almost caused Yukito to retreat in horror and reconsider his worldview, or at least his knowledge of the mentality of modern Japanese high school students. Where were the outcasts, the loners, the friendless refuse of society who ate their mass-produced sandwiches while looking down with disdain on the soulless concrete jungle of Tokyo? _Kids these days._ Everyone in his time knew the rooftop was the best place to rebel against the chains of modern society.

But maybe it was better that the roof was deserted; this way he didn’t have an audience to embarrass himself before. Yukito took a seat by the safety fencing – they called it that, but it was anti-suicide fencing, a truth that was known but not said – and took out his guitar, caressing the handsome wood. The first strum made him wince, and immediately he reached for the tuning pegs, his forehead creasing with concentration. It was far worse than he’d expected, the warping of his guitar strings. At this rate, it would take him much of the lunch period to get the guitar back in tune.

“You’re working hard, Yukimura-sensei,” said a quiet voice.

Yukito looked up to respond and thwacked his head on the anti-suicide fencing. As the stars cleared from his eyes, he saw Arima Kishou standing before him, a package of plastic-wrapped sandwiches in one hand. A wry smile wormed its way across Yukito’s face.

“Sit, sit,” he said, patting the concrete beside him and hoping that his voice didn’t come off too strained. “Is that from the school cafeteria?”

Arima nodded. “What are you doing?”

“What does it look like I’m doing?” He finished the G and started tuning the A string. Arima watched him in silence, fingers peeling apart the plastic with deadly precision. Yukito resisted the urge to watch his hands, and instead focused on the guitar. “A colleague of mine is doing a review of studies on music therapy – it’s not a field that’s easy to quantify, but that goes for most holistic psychotherapies, really. But still, I’ll try anything that might work.”

“You’ll play music for the students?”

“Well, I’m thinking about just strumming this when I’m on break, to make myself seem approachable. You know, you’ll walk down the hall and you’ll hear some music, and you’ll come in to talk to me because I seem very relaxed and cool. Don’t look at me like that, it worked in college.”

The shade of a smile lifted the corners of Arima’s mouth. “I thought you would’ve been very busy in college, training to be a psychologist and all.”

“You’re not wrong, but I needed hobbies in a place like that, otherwise I would’ve gone insane. I actually learned from one of my roommates. He was a good teacher.” An idea came to Yukito, a stroke of genius surely made by God’s pen. “I can teach you, if you want.”

Arima stared at him, confusion evident in his gaze. “Teach me to play the guitar?”

“Yeah.” Yukito knew that he was overstepping the boundaries of what was socially acceptable in making such a bold offer, but he didn’t particularly care. He could explain it as some odd quirk that psychologists had – ‘ _it’s my job to knock you off balance, so I can find out what you’re really thinking_ ’ – but he had ulterior motives for doing so, he couldn’t deny that.

“I -” Oh, yes, Arima was very off balance, very off balance indeed. “I don’t know -”

“It’s fine if you don’t want to – don’t say yes just to spare my feelings,” Yukito interrupted, laughing. _Make it seem like something that’s inconsequential, that he doesn’t have to commit to._ “I’m just offering because you seem like a bright kid, and you’d learn pretty quickly.”

Arima feigned nonchalance, but his eyes, shielded by glass and black wire, held a faint glimmer of curiosity. “Well, if it’s not too much trouble for you…”

_I’ve got him_ , Yukito crowed in his head. _I’ve got him hooked._

“Let’s start with the basics, then. This is how you hold a guitar -” He slid the curved belly of the instrument into Arima’s lap, and gently maneuvered his arms into position. If he just leaned a little further, he could embrace the boy from behind. “And this is how you position your fingers…”

-

Two weeks passed in this unwavering manner, the days creeping in at a petty pace. Yukito went to the school in the morning, saw the occasional referral, students or sometimes school staff, and spent his lunch breaks with drop-in appointments. The counseling sessions were tapering off in number quite significantly, but he always had one final meeting to look forward to. At the end of the day Arima Kishou would drop in, guitar case over one shoulder, with a neutral mask that obscured any indication of excitement, anticipation, or joy clamped tight over his expression. But nevertheless he showed up like clockwork, and Yukito would always offer a welcoming smile first, even if it was never returned.

That last meeting was always the highlight of Yukito’s day, that last daily challenge of getting that mask to crack just a little. He’d gotten it to drop almost entirely about a week ago, when he offered to gift his guitar to Arima. “I’m too busy compiling my research to play at home,” he explained, “And you’re learning so fast that you could use some practice outside of our lessons, don’t you think?”

The surprise and quiet pleasure in Arima’s voice when he said his thanks was nectar to Yukito’s ears, but he needed more. Arima was keeping his infatuation fed on scraps and morsels of affection. It was enough now, but Yukito could feel his patience wearing thin by the hour, his self-control stretched almost to the point of no return. What happened next came around with perfect timing. Yukito had, at the two-week mark, another stroke of luck concerning the development of his odd relationship with Arima – and this one by pure coincidence, the alignment of the planets falling into place for him and his blinding love. It crept up on him, in the manner that the best things often do; and it began with the most routine of occurrences – a phone call from his sister in the brief half-hour where their lunch breaks overlapped.

“But I really need you to do this,” she begged, her voice scratchy over the connection. “They’re dropping it off at four, and if you’re not there to sign for it then I’ll have to go to the post office and then it’ll take another week –”

“It has to be today?” Yukito exhaled, not bothering to hide his annoyance. “What’s this package, if it’s that important?”

“I tried to get them to deliver in the evening, but they said our area’s been marked for afternoon deliveries only. It has something to do with the, I don’t know, the layout of the district, I think. Maybe it’s because we’re across the canal?”

“Youko, what’s in the package?”

“It’s – it’s books.” She sounded flustered at the heavy silence on Yukito’s end of the line. “It’s the original Spanish edition of _El amor en los tiempos del colera_! Plus some other novels by Marquez. Look, I had to work really hard to get this shipped to Japan. Yukito, _please_.”

It broke his heart a little that his sister begged him for this, even jokingly, because she never asked for anything, ever. “I’ll do it, calm down.”

“It’s not an inconvenience?”

“I’ll just rearrange some appointments. Don’t worry about it.” He hung up before he had to listen to any further theatrics. On his way back from the bathroom, he scribbled a quick note and asked a passing student, carrying the hall pass from 1-A, to give it to her classmate Arima Kishou.

It surprised him how bright the day could be, when he left work early. The streets around the high school seemed dustier as he crossed the blocks to the canal. There were students heading out as well, but the majority of them walked towards Shinagawa’s downtown, towards cafes and shops and cram schools. Very few were going east towards the canal, like Yukito. Among the thinning numbers, it wasn’t long before Yukito spotted a mop of familiar, inky blue hair.

“Arima-kun?” He called, not daring to believe.

The inky blue head turned. “Yukimura-sensei?”

“I didn’t know you lived in this direction,” was all Yukito could think of to say.

Together they crossed the canal, and the thought crossed Yukito’s mind that they really had progressed so much. Not two weeks ago he had been standing, rooted to this very spot, caught breathless by a fleeting vision. In that dreamlike spring he’d thought Arima to be beauty personified and untouchable. And now he was walking home in the most routine fashion with that same object of his desires. Oh, how the tides could shift.

“I’m staying with my grandmother,” said Arima. “My parents are working abroad.”

They chatted about anything and everything, though Arima always managed to steer the conversation back to Yukito. By the time they reached the gate to Yukito’s apartment complex, they had covered the majority of Yukito’s college history, from his brief fling with mechanical engineering to his multiple flings with actual people. The conversation was so natural, and Yukito so distracted, that he didn’t notice until reaching the second floor landing that he and Arima Kishou were still walking side-by-side.

“Wait,” he stuttered, “are you following me?”

Arima glanced sideways, the sun reflecting off his glasses. “I was going to ask you the same thing, Yukimura-sensei.”

“I – wait, you said you lived with your grandmother!”

“I do. She lives in this complex.”

“Where?”

“Apartment 3-B.”

Yukito could feel his jaw going slack. “I’m in 3-C!”

“That’s an interesting coincidence, Yukimura-sensei.” Yukito was half-irritating at the way Arima needed to tack on his name at the end of every sentence, but this was the most he’d ever heard Arima was say his name, so in the end he decided against mentioning the fact. “But could you please keep your voice down? My grandmother is usually napping at this hour.”

“Oh, of course. My apologies.” A beat. “Wait, Morinaga Hanako is your grandmother? She has _kids_? Also, we’re neighbors? _We are?_ ”

“That’s generally the term for people who live next door to each other, yes.” Arima fished a pair of keys out of his pocket. “I’ll see you tomorrow at school, Yukimura-sensei. Have a good day.”

The door to Apartment 3-B closed with a soft squeak in Yukito’s face, and for a full minute, he could only stand and stare.

-

Mrs. Okamoto Ayane awoke on an April morning with the feeling that something was horribly, horribly wrong. She laid awake in bed, next to the snoring Mr. Okamoto, and ran through the list in her head – the stove was turned off, the lights were shut off, and the rice cooker was set on an automatic timer. Check, check, check. The plants were watered, the laundry was folded, check, check. Pochi was back at her eldest daughter’s apartment, so he couldn’t possibly chew up the hydrangeas anymore. Check.

She got up, did her morning stretches, and headed to the supermarket. If she had been a little more attentive, she would have noticed that this was the fifth time that week that the paper boy had lobbed the _Asahi Shimbun_ to thud against their doors, and two doors down, there had been no reaction from Mrs. Morinaga. As it was, she didn’t come to this realization until she was shuffling back from the market and up the stairs, when she almost tripped over the rolled up newspaper lying askew before the door to Apartment 3-B.

There was something odd about the newspaper. For one, there was an irregular red splotch printed in the corner, almost covering half of the first article. She looked closer. The splotch led into a dull crimson puddle, leaking steadily from under the doorframe. It was unnoticeable against Morinaga’s black doormat, but after crossing that border it spread vividly over the gray concrete that formed the rest of the balcony. A growing pond of dull red.

Mrs. Okamoto made it a point never to look through other people’s lives, but at that moment, curiosity held her in an iron grip. She tried peeking through the window first, but the curtains were drawn. She then did something that surprised even herself – she tried the doorknob. It twisted clockwise, smooth as butter.

Apartment 3-B yawned open, and in the mouth of that vast cave, Morinaga Hanako lay facedown with her hand outstretched, reaching towards the door and the light. Her prone form looked very broken and small in the dim morning. Carved deep in her back was a gaping hole, as though some large animal – a monstrous version of her daughter’s Pochi, Mrs. Okamoto’s numb mind supplied – had found Mrs. Morinaga to be quite appetizing, and taken a bite.

Mrs. Okamoto’s grocery bag thumped against the ground, and she stumbled backwards from the gory sight, her hands shaking. She tried hard not to vomit over Mrs. Morinaga’s corpse, but in the end bodily instinct won over. All that came up was water and stomach acid, which dribbled mostly onto the floor, but also onto the hem of Mrs. Okamoto’s favorite cardigan. The eggs she’d purchased that morning leaked their contents all over the third-floor balcony, mingled with Mrs. Morinaga’s pooling blood, and dripped onto the parking lot below.

-

Yukito didn’t wake with quite the same sense of foreboding as Mrs. Okamoto, but he was well-aware that something was off when he walked into his office. The curtains around the bed closest to his desk were drawn, odd because there weren’t even any students yet at this hour of the morning. Moreover, his desk phone was ringing.

He picked up the call, and over the line his sister’s voice blared in. “Yukito! You’re at work?”

“Yeah,” he answered, moving to open the window. The morning air had been so pleasant during his walk to the school, and he wanted to feel the sunlight just one more time before he was cooped in for the day. “What’s the matter? I loaded the dishwasher, I swear -”

“The police are here.” Youko took a breath. “Yukito, listen to me. Don’t panic, it’s the regular police. Not the CCG.”

Yukito leaned against his desk, rubbing at his temples. “Got it. Got it. Why? We live in a pretty safe part of town.”

“That’s the thing. I talked to one of the officers before I went to work.” Youko paused, and in the space between, the seconds felt like eternity. “Morinaga Hanako was murdered last night. Our neighbor, the old lady who yelled at the paper boy all the time -”

“I know who she is. God, she was – really? Are you -”

His voice cut off, because there was movement behind the closed curtains, and suddenly he had a very good guess as to who was hiding within.

“Youko,” he said, “I’ll call you back. I have to take care of this.”

Yukito pulled the curtains aside with gentle fingers. Arima stirred on the thin cot, his eyes reddened with sleep. His gakuran was rumpled, the stiff collar a wrinkled mess, and his glasses hung askew from one ear. At the sight of Yukito he sat bolt upright, and looked about to leap from the bed until Yukito put his hands up and waved them in a calming gesture.

“Lie down,” said Yukito. “Lie down. Take a breath. Breathe.”

It took a long moment, but Arima did as he asked.

“I’m sorry about the phone,” said Yukito, as softly as he could while still remaining audible. “I’ll make sure that doesn’t happen again. I know you’re probably very tired right now, but do you want to talk?”

Seeing Arima Kishou in such vulnerability, strangely, did nothing to him at this point. Two weeks ago he would have found the sight irresistible, and innate hunger would have overtaken his psychotherapist’s instinct. But now – Yukito moved towards Arima, not wanting carnal fulfillment, but rather a desire to embrace, to protect. _Youko_ , he thought, _I’m a tremendous fool._

“I broke in last night,” said Arima, his voice very flat. That mask again, opaque neutrality overtaking everything. “They lock the doors but there’s a loose hinge on the window to one of the science labs.”

“That’s on the third floor,” Yukito noted.

Arima shrugged. “I climbed the tree next to the main entrance.”

“And then you came here?” Yukito shifted closer. “I’m going to touch you, is that ok?”

Arima nodded.

“Good.” He folded his arms around Arima’s shoulders, just light enough so that though there was contact, Arima could move away any time he wanted. “You’re incredibly brave, do you know that?”

Yukito could hear the tension in Arima’s body, humming, brittle like a guitar string wound too tight. Keenly aware of Arima’s seeming discomfort, he was just about to relax his grip when a warm weight sagged against his chest. For the third time, Arima knocked him breathless. The shape in his arms was warm, so warm, and so solid.

“I lied to you when I said that Morinaga Hanako was my grandmother,” Arima began, hesitating. “And also the part about my parents, kind of. Morinaga is – she’s – not that connected to me. But she was a nice old lady.”

“Mhm.” Yukito patted him on the head, a smoothing, repetitive motion. Another time, another place, and he might’ve reacted stronger to the lie, but right now he thought he could accept anything Arima said. “I knew her. We were neighbors. You’re right, she was nice.”

“I don’t want to go back,” whispered Arima. “I don’t want to go back there. I know who did it. The police will be useless – there’s no way they can find the – the – the one who – the one who killed her.”

He trailed off into silence, and Yukito stood up to close the curtains. Arima was lying down again, on his side with legs drawn up tight against his chest. After a moment’s hesitation, Yukito joined him on the bed, slinging an arm around Arima’s waist, and nestled his chin against the junction between Arima’s neck and shoulder when it was clear that he would be allowed to stay. A comfortable silence overtook them. The curtains fluttered in a sudden breeze, and with the rising wind a shower of petals soared through the open window and collided with white cotton, dropping to the floor in a flowering rain. Late spring blooms, thought Yukito, and sank into drowsiness as the morning sun brushed light-fingered rays up his arm. Arima shifted in his uneasy sleep and murmured, the words unintelligible.

He couldn’t recall feeling this warm in a long, long time. Curling around the soft weight in his arms, Yukito closed his eyes and trusted that the long winter had thawed at last.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As you can tell, I've updated the story summary - it's somewhat more relevant to the plot now, I suppose.
> 
> I was influenced a lot by sodomquake's P4 fic "Sympathy Crime" while sketching out the relationship between Yukito and Arima - you can't find it on AO3 anymore, but I believe there's still a mirror on LJ somewhere.


	5. Lord Lazarus

_I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed_  
_And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane._  
_(I think I made you up inside my head.)_  
_(Sylvia Plath, Mad Girl’s Love Song)_

 

Yukimura sits tall, with a waterfall of black hair – still black, Kishou notes, though she’s pushing forty – that swoops over her shoulders and piles on her arms. Kishou remembers old scrolls in the National Museum, Heian ladies in multilayered silken kimonos with their hair loose around their shoulders. Yukimura could fit into a painting, if she wanted. Her fingers pick up the coffee cup like a bird, enveloping it in a hollow of skin and bone, a treasured thing. She is an image of the floating world, painted onto reality upon a thin sheet of gauze. If someone touches her, she might tear.

Her smile is paper-and-wax, a work of art made not for him. “Arima-kun.”

That voice, it tinkles still.

“We repeat this performance every year,” Kishou says, his eyes flicking over the scenery outside. Yukimura Youko is boring to look at, after the necessary greetings. An ancient painting – beautiful on the outside, but so familiar it was mundane to the weary eye. “Don’t you ever get tired of it?”

“Are you asking because you’ve become tired of me?” Yukimura blows on her coffee, and the steam briefly veils her face. “If you have something to say, come right out and say it.”

Kishou taps his fingers on the table, a drumbeat without rhythm.

“I wish you would trust me,” says Yukimura, and sips her coffee.

-

“I wish you would trust me,” said Yukimura, and sipped his coffee.

Kishou cradled his own cup, inhaling the steam. “I do,” he said, and it was half-true.

They sat side by side at a low table before the TV, shoulders pressed against one another. Cardboard boxes, full of Yukimura’s things, were scattered in the narrow strip of tiled floor by the front door. Kishou lowered his coffee and breathed in, tasting stale sawdust and abandonment. This new apartment was clean but bleak, and it was clear that no one had lived here for a long time.

Yukimura closed his eyes, and in the afternoon light, the shadows under his eyes deepened to a violet hue. In the week after Morinaga Hanako’s murder, Yukimura had been a busy man, Kishou reflected. He had endured questioning from the police – polite questioning, of course, a courtesy extended to a young professional of obvious good breeding.

If the police hadn’t been quite so polite, they might’ve discovered that Yukimura Yukito walked a strange path after leaving their interview: he headed to his school office to pick up some papers, then to a downtown café to write for about two or three hours. Following that, he did not head home, but rather to a discreet downtown hotel where he shared a room with a high school student, his bill paid for with Yukimura Youko’s credit card.

It had taken Yukimura about a week to secure this bare-bones loft apartment in the heart of Shinagawa Ward, after a lengthy process involving countless forms and phone calls and discreet gifts to a colleague’s sister-in-law who was also a real estate agent. But at last the lease was signed, the boxes were taped up and loaded, and at the end of a strange whirlwind journey Kishou found himself sitting pressed against Yukimura Yukito’s side, cradling a chipped mug of coffee and running his socked feet against the seams of well-worn floorboards.

“You do?”

 _What an oddly domestic scene_ , he thought, as Yukimura slung an arm around his shoulders and pressed his mouth against Kishou’s hair. The sunlight fell dappled through the windows – they hadn’t bothered putting up curtains yet, but outside the building an ancient plum tree grew parallel to the western wall, gnarled branches hidden by snowy clusters of notch-petaled blossoms. The wind plucked them one by one, and as they fell they cast shifting speckles of gray over the apartment interior.

Yukimura’s hand on his shoulder lifted to cradle the back of Kishou’s head, a gentle pressure that beckoned Kishou to turn and look. The wind stopped then, and the plum tree stilled. A ray of light haloed Yukimura’s head as he lowered his face and pressed his lips against Kishou’s, a brief touching that was cool and dry and tasted of the spring breeze.

He kissed like someone who practiced clinical psychology, Kishou thought, closing his eyes and not leaning in, nor moving away. Probing, searching, passionless. Perhaps it was better this way. It felt right, his first kiss falling on the cusp of an anticlimax that made his heart sink like a stone. No buildup, no resolution – just Yukimura kissing him, like it was natural, like he’d done it before, then pulling away to drink his coffee again.

“Did you like that, Kishou-kun?”

Kishou said, “I liked it better when you called me Arima-kun.”

-

Kishou says, “I’d prefer it if you didn’t call me Arima-kun.”

Yukimura Youko giggles into the back of her hand, a girlish sound that pains Kishou to hear. “It’s strange calling you Arima-san. You’re still ten years my junior.”

Their server totters closer with Yukimura’s refill. She’s a short pipsqueak of a girl, fawn-footed in chunky Mary Janes, like a little sister playing dress-up. Three spiked nubs of hair protrude from the top of her head, a sight that intrigues Kishou simply because of its courageous defiance of all conventional physics. She sets down fresh coffee and takes Yukimura’s empty cup by the saucer, the two pieces clacking together like teeth in her trembling hand.

“P-Please tell me if you need anything else!” She performs a short bow and walks away unsteadily, and cements her clumsiness by stepping on Kishou’s foot as she turns.

“Cute girl,” Yukimura comments. She tucks a lock of hair behind her ear, half the strands slipping free when she lets go. Strands like silk, like water.

In the paintings the Heian ladies set dolls onto ponds and let them float away, carrying away with them the troubles of the year. It is a vain and grotesque practice, if Kishou really considers the implications, piling sins and turmoil into the arms of a mulberry paper bogeyman. But when civilizations elsewhere in the world are known to stone goats in the desert, or burn great effigies wearing mustachioed masks, or crucify the Lamb of God, _hina-nagashi_ is but a small offering with the absolution of sin at stake. The weight of soul-crimes, scaled against the existence of a frail human imitation constructed from rice tissue – it can’t be a question, which to choose. Simple economics.

One time at the dentist’s office he’d been idly flipping through a travel brochure that mentioned dolls being burned, not drowned, at Shimogamo Shrine in Kyoto. Kishou can imagine Yukimura burning him, or trying to. It wouldn’t take very much; a scuffed zippo or a red-tipped match, and he could be gone in a flash of light and a scream. His head is already kindling, feathered brittle, and his coat is white-on-ivory; he would burn so clean, hydrocarbon clean.

Because – because there is something predatory in Yukimura’s eyes when he catches her gaze, something that suggests she wants to see him scorched and destroyed.

“How have you been lately, Arima-kun?”

“You don’t care,” answers Kishou, “So why do you ask?”

They sit in wordless camaraderie until Yukimura finishes her second coffee. The little waitress comes by twice more to ask if Kishou wants something to drink, but he refuses. He pays for Yukimura at the counter and is about to leave when he realizes that she too hasn’t exited the café yet, she’s just gone to the outdoor seating section.

Outside on the balcony, the wind is crisp and dry. Yukimura lights a cigarette, her left hand shaking slightly. The smoke blows into Kishou’s face as she exhales, carrying with it the dark, heady scent of coffee and unidentifiable hardwood. It reminds him of the other Yukimura, and too quickly his mind strikes the notion down. The dissonance arises from a contradiction between his memory and his nose, for this fragrance is everything that Yukito was not – Yukito was pale, clean and bright. Yukito was the spring stream in May carrying dolls down the stream, every peal of laughter a ripple.

“I wish you could treat me with something a little less than coldness,” says Yukimura, sighing smoke at the trees. “I’m trying to be nice, but it’s like talking to a wall.”

“We’ve been meeting like this, every year for the past decade. Does my reticence finally surprise you now?” Kishou has no patience for her empty appeals; Yukimura knows that she is asking for an empathy that Arima Kishou, the one called CCG’s Reaper, could not possibly possess. “You should take your own advice, Youko. If you have something to say, you should come right out and say it.”

Yukimura opens her mouth slightly, and closes it again. “That’s the first time you’ve called me by my given name,” she murmurs. “Maybe things could change.”

Kishou sighs. “What are you trying to -”

“But since you’re convinced that we’re repeating an old performance,” Yukimura interrupts, “Let’s go to the next act, shall we? Come to my apartment, Arima-kun. You know this part well.”

She crushes her cigarette against a wrought-iron table and flicks the remainder into the trees, turning towards the street with a swish of her coat. Kishou follows, soundless.

-

Cohabitation bred familiarity, and familiarity bred comfort – for Yukimura, that much held true. He escalated from gentle morning kisses to mouthing at the back of Kishou’s neck when he was getting dressed, and Kishou would have been a fool not to notice the hard outline digging into the small of his back when Yukimura embraced him from behind. He liked to tip Kishou’s head back with fingers under his chin, kissing him while his wandering hands encircled Kishou’s body all over.

“I love you,” Yukimura whispered in the gaps when his mouth was parted from Kishou’s skin, and Kishou could do nothing but nod breathless affirmations. “I love you so much.”

In a twist that Kishou never anticipated, Yukimura’s love trumped his lust – he could bring Kishou to every precipice but never take the next step until Kishou, desperate for release, begged him to keep going. Little permissions were extracted in this manner, in bits and pieces, until one moonless evening when Kishou parted nervous thighs and watched Yukimura undo his belt and approach. He nodded, and remembered forever how the silvery lamplight reflected in Yukimura’s glittering eyes in sharp slivers and arcs, a sharpness that matched the pain when Yukimura breached him at last.

With the crossing of this final barrier, Yukimura had no more permissions to seek. Kishou found himself dreading the start of the warm season, when he would have to start wearing his summer uniform – without a high-collared gakuran, the visible remnants of Yukimura’s affection would no longer be a secret kept only between Yukimura and himself.

He found soon that Yukimura had an appetite for possession and surprises, a habit that he did not like admitting but could not hide. One moment Yukimura would be kissing him, slow and tender, and in the next breath he would slam Kishou against the wall and haul him up by the backs of his thighs, swallowing Kishou in one slick movement with fine-boned hands holding his hips tight and helpless. Kishou’s protests, the hoarse sounds he made while stars filled his vision, went noticed but ignored.

For Yukimura was a creature of instinct, Kishou discovered. In the heat of the moment, there was nothing that could stop his need to fulfill his own desires. His hands liked to wander to Kishou’s throat and linger there, thumb caressing the Adam’s apple, and when Yukimura found his own release his fingers would tighten and nothing could interrupt him.

In the mornings, when Kishou awoke, he was greeted by last night’s gifts glowing vivid on his skin; blue shadows over his iliac crests where Yukimura’s fingers dug into his hips while he fucked Kishou into the mattress, his lips swollen and red where Yukimura nipped him, necklaces of purple and gold ringing his collarbones and neck. He stood before the mirror and touched them, fascinated by the spectrum of colors made by blood spilled beneath his skin, and pressed his cold fingers into the hot ache of each speckled bruise.

 _This here, this is love_ , Kishou thought. Love was here in the stains against his skin, in the colors that Yukimura gave him. Love was the paint with which Yukimura could take a blank canvas like Kishou and illustrate the innards of his heart.

It was a strange kind of voyeurism, being in his own body as Yukimura cradled him afterwards and peppered his neck with soft butterfly kisses. Kishou was here, and he was being loved by Yukimura, but he couldn’t find the affection in himself to reciprocate. He was witnessing an intimacy that he had no right to, had not paid the toll for. Yukimura’s heart was the Shinanogawa, the total volume of his outpouring love overwhelming, and Kishou’s was a rusted spigot that had run dry long ago.

-

“Oh fuck,” moans Yukimura, “Oh god, oh god, oh _fuck -_ ”

She collapses in Kishou’s arms, shoulders trembling with aftershocks, and lies still with her legs astride his. In the end it’s Kishou who moves first, Kishou who rolls Yukimura over onto her back and heads to the toilet without so much as a glance at his partner. He hears her whisper Yukito’s name as he closes the bathroom door.

When he returns, he finds Yukimura propped up on pillows with a cigarette between her teeth. Her breasts, soft curving forms, are still comparatively good-looking for someone pushing forty. _It would be a shame if she dropped any ash on them_ , Kishou thinks. She brings the cigarette to her lips and lets her arm fall away as she exhales, exposing the gifts that Kishou has given her, the necklaces of purple and gold, speckled bruises in the shapes of Kishou’s fingers.

He shoves armfuls of books aside to find some room on Yukimura’s bed that he can lie down upon. She sleeps tangled around her books, with a finger stuck inside the volume she is currently reading. The rest pile up, scattered and discarded, great works of literature festering in organic entropy over her sheets.

If Kishou is honest, he enjoys these moments the most. Sex with Yukimura is simple mechanics at this point, and he knows besides that it’s not really Arima Kishou that she’s fucking. In Yukimura’s head it’s her dead brother that she wants, her dead brother that died ten years ago by Arima Kishou’s hand. After all the entanglements are gone, after he’s stumbled to the bathroom and had his post-coital piss and she’s cleaned the semen out of her cunt, that’s when they lie together naked and silent, and Kishou can simply be himself without his shoulders burdened by older ghosts.

“I want to see him,” says Yukimura. “My brother.”

It’s taken her ten years to work up the courage, but she’s finally asked. Kishou feels almost proud for her, though the notion is complete absurdity. Simultaneously, he wants her to just shut up.

“You can’t,” answers Kishou. “He’s not with me.”

“Then who?”

“I don’t know.” He gave Yukimura to Hirako ages ago, and now that Hirako has a quinque of his own, Chigyou’s people have sealed up Yukimura wherever extra quinques are stored. He doesn’t have much incentive to seek out where, exactly. “The CCG takes the quinques that we aren’t using, you know. They take them and they keep them for new investigators. Some new kid, maybe more talented than me, will get your brother.”

She sags against the headboard. “I just want to see him again,” Yukimura whispers. “There’s a rumor going around – I’m not going to tell you from who – that if you get close enough to a quinque, you can smell the ghoul it came from. I don’t care that it’s a shred of him, I just – want to think that some part of him is near me again.”

 _Stop talking_ , Kishou begs her, in his head. _Stop talking._

“It’s a horrifying thing, what you people do, but, but…Arima, I don’t ask for much, but don’t you think that you owe me this, at least? After all that’s happened between us, between you and my brother. You’re telling me that you can’t throw your weight around a little and get back a weapon that you made when you were fifteen?”

Kishou opens his mouth to respond, but exhaustion overcomes him. Why did they all think that he had some power, that he could accomplish and charm and intimidate his way into the things that weren’t granted to ordinary men? A sword could never recite literature, a lance could never compose songs – weapons, he and all the rest, are made for one and only one purpose. Kishou can touch Yukimura Youko, but he can’t tell if she feels his presence until Kishou’s marks are embedded visible in her body, until her pupils dilate with helpless fear. He connects with her, Yukimura and all the rest, through pain. Pain, the giving and the receiving of, is all he knows.

 _And that I learned from your brother_ , he wants to tell Yukimura. _Your brother, who reached into my personhood and pulled emotion out of the vast numbness in my heart – you have him to thank, in some circular fashion, for the bruises on your neck._

“Arima,” Yukimura breathes. “Arima?”

“Yes?”

“You – sometimes,” Yukimura says, her voice halting. “Sometimes, when you’re caught unaware, you have the strangest look on your face. Like you’re lost and you’re searching, but you don’t know what for.”

“I’m right here,” says Kishou.

“I know. But in your mind you are lost, and it shows in your face. Like you were lost from the start, and never found.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter deals primarily with my personal interpretation of Arima, in particular the "sadism" that Ishida-sensei attributes to his character. 
> 
> I'm aware that the timeline gets a bit hazy throughout the course of the chapter - for reference, all the scenes with Youko are set in the present, with 28-year old Arima, and the scenes with Yukito are when Arima is 15.


End file.
